Routine is settling in. As I have mentioned, my time seems to be shrinking. Or speeding up. It’s a good sign when time flies by, but it scares me. I look at my colleagues, some of whom have been in the same position, doing pretty much the same job, for decades — and try to imagine waking up ten years from now, getting up at the same time in the morning, going to the same place, doing the same thing with the same people. This is the life of many, but there’s something scary about it for me.

A year has passed since Tounsi started being ill. It was early November. He had his MRI early December. He died January 1st. It still feels very recent. His ashes are still in a little box in my bookcase — I haven’t felt ready to spread them in the garden yet. I think I should just do it.

Quintus hasn’t been well lately. I took him for a checkup before starting my new job. He has pancreatitis, and developed diabetes as a result. He’s on insulin now (it’s been 10 days) and we are hoping to get the pancreatits under control. He’s been improving, slowly, with a bit of back and forth. But I have to face things: he’s an old cat, going on 17, and we’re lucky he’s still around. I treasure every extra week I get with him, and hope it will be months. But there are no certainties.

And so I face another winter with the prospect of possibly losing a cat. Bagha died just before Christmas, too. I don’t believe in magic, so I’m not scared winter is “more dangerous” for my cats than any other time of the year. But it does mean that I have had some difficult winters — including the one following my mother’s death when I was a child.

My preoccupation with Quintus makes me feel my hours away from home with a particular awareness. My days at work don’t feel long, but my time at home feels short. A week is a handful of waking hours. I’ve become somebody who doesn’t want to spend any more time away from home than absolutely necessary.

My professional ambition right now is a job that allows me to come back home for lunch. That would be just wonderful.

Time is catching up with me. It was to be expected. As novelty and excitement starts to wear off, a more sustainable rythm needs to be found.

I’m starting to feel tired. That’s what I’m paid for, my dad would say. Not badly tired, just, tired. So I’m being careful before I need to be.

Sleep. Don’t take on too much. Give myself time to breathe, and more importantly, think. Thinking is so important. At work, too. Taking time to look out of the window while solutions take shape. Doing is not only typing on a keyboard. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact my work requires me to think. 15 years ago, I’m not sure I was.

I had to take a day off work on my first week, to teach elsewhere (a preexisting commitment). At first I thought I’d catch up those hours. But after a couple of weeks I discovered that making up for 8+ hours when you’re already working 4.5 days a week, and commuting 2.5 hours a day is not easy. I decided to stop trying to stretch my already long days to make up for it, and cash in a day of vacation instead. A wise decision: I now have a few hours in the bank, which means I don’t have to worry about those days where I have to leave work early, and I can be home at 6pm.

Having a basic structure for my time is interesting. It’s something I can build upon. It’s constraining, of course: I have few hours every day to spend with my old cat Quintus, less time to see friends and family. I’m alseep by 10pm, up at 5.30. My struggle of all these last years to try to introduce some routine in my too-free life has been solved for me – dramatically.

My weeks pretty much all look the same now. Head off to Fribourg on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Lausanne on Wednesday, work in the morning, errands and appointments and the odd client appointment in the afternoon. Laundry on Friday evening when I get home. Maybe grocery shopping too – doing that on Saturday is just miserable. And I discovered last week that doing laundry and grocery shopping on Friday means that when I get up on Saturday, I’m pretty much “free”.

I’m discovering that I don’t have that much practice functioning when tired. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Previously, when I was tired, I’d rest, and try and do things when I was in good shape. Now, the calendar rather than how I feel determines what I do. It’s a strange change.

[en] A rough calculation based on the 20 years of cat-life in my home tell me that in Switzerland, one should budget roughly CHF 2000.- per year and per cat, food and meds included. It's an average. But knowing this might help us see less people in Facebook groups saying they won't spay their cat because it's too expensive (hey, kittens are expensive too!) or can't take their sick cat to the vet because they don't have the money.

[en] There is a large chunk of my time that I don't "own" anymore, as it is my employer's, in a way. It's making me reflect on how I did or didn't protect my working time as a freelancer, and how that is indicative of my priorities regarding earning money vs. "social obligations".

My heart sank when I read Quinn’s post. I’ve known, since the outing of a string of VCs, that soon it would be not just people who were one step away, or direct connections I had scant contact with, but also people I knew and liked.

Francine expresses what I feel the best. I’m not as close to the Scoble family as she is, of course. But I like Robert. We used to bump into each other at conferences. I’ve followed hisstruggles these last years from afar. I’ve met Maryam a couple of times.

The second part of Quinn’s post really resonates with me. About restorative justice. About not demonising people who do bad things. I’ve written about this, obliquely. Sadly, the pile-on in online media is going to be about “yet another tech pundit sexually harassing women”.

So, here are a few thoughts.

Sexism and harassment need to be fought

Does anybody have a doubt about this? The question is how. I see three levels: culture, institutions, people. You cannot deal with one without dealing with the others.

Culture is the way we raise children. Movies. Billboards. What is “socially acceptable”.

Using a broad brush here. But these are the three levels at which I see we can act.

Everybody does bad things

People are fallible. People are broken. People can be trapped in behaviours they fail to change. Being a victim sucks. Being an abuser sucks too. I’m not putting them on the same level: but there is a difference to be made between a psychopath and somebody who hurts others as a way to survive, or because they don’t know any better. (And… it isn’t even that clear-cut for psychopaths.)

Systematic lynching of all Bad People (TM) (otherwise known as Good People who do Bad Things) will get us nowhere. Yelling at people who are trying to mend their ways, imperfectly, telling them apologies are not enough when apologies are already a hugely difficult step, will get us nowhere.

I get the anger. I cannot stand behind the outrage. It’s easy to be angry and club people to death. One thing to learn, when learning about one’s anger, is that anger is often anger that cuts people out. It’s much harder to be angry and continue caring. And stick around. When anger means outright rejection, then that is all the more reason to stay silent and hidden.

We are judging people based on the worst thing they have done. Now think of the worst thing you have done. Does it define you?

(I know I’m going to be lynched here for “defending the perpetrator”. So be it.)

People’s actions have context

We don’t exist in a vacuum. Powerful men who harass women do it because the institutions and culture enable it. It doesn’t make them blameless, far from it. But just as we women have to fight against a system that puts us in a place we don’t like, so do men. And that place might very well be the place of power and abuse.

I think we are well aware of the systemic issue here. I would like to question how much going after individuals really solves the systemic issue. It’s a real question.

Nobody is a harasser

This is something that became very clear to me I was harassed a few years ago (not sexually, counting my blessings, but it was bad enough). The main perpetrator in my story did not see his behaviour as abusive, or see himself as harassing me. He saw himself as the victim. He was an ally of women. He was defending himself against me.

Nobody is ever the Bad Guy, in their eyes.

Coming to terms with the fact one is an abuser requires a 180 flip in how one sees oneself. It is no easy feat. Just as you can’t convince an anti-vaxxer that vaccines are safe by pounding your fist on the table and telling them to open their eyes and look at the science, which will only entrench them more in their beliefs, I don’t think publicly shaming people is the final answer to getting them to recognise their bad behaviour.

This should also be a cautionary tale to us when we feel justified in our anger and outrage. Anger is useful. I often encourage people to use their anger when something bad is being done to them. Anger is what will help you slap in the face the guy who put his hand on your butt. Anger is what will give you power to stand up, walk to HR and put your fist on the table to say “this is not OK and has to stop”.

But when anger leads to outrage over situations you are not part of, when you pile on Justine Sacco because she deserves it or on a “sexist pig” because he deserves to see his life destroyed, on which side of the harassment divide are you?

Trauma doesn’t have to destroy you

The fact I feel like I have to keep on saying “this is not what I’m saying” is testimony to how trigger-ready many are on these topics. But I’ll still say it: this is not me telling victims to “just get over it already”.

But.

Trauma, in a way, is a part of life. It sucks all the more when it was wilfully inflicted upon you by another person. But it doesn’t have to destroy you. Or define you.

I have thankfully never been raped. Of course, #metoo, I’ve had to swat away unwelcome hands or back off from grinding groins (wonder why I don’t like the dancefloor? look no further). I’ve stayed speechless in the face of comments on my sex life from colleagues or “friends” – though lately, each time less speechless, as I’ve decided to strive towards a zero-tolerance policy for casual everyday sexism around me. Easier said than done, but getting there.

My mother died when I was 10. This trauma was not anybody’s fault, granted. It’s had an impact on my life. Contributed to making me who I am. More or less broken like everyone, more or less functional despite it.

Many things that happen to us in life shouldn’t happen. We must work towards preventing those we can – and lecherous men in positions of power are definitely on that list. But we must work also on not letting trauma take over our lives and reduce us to a heap of fuming outrage.

Nothing is unforgivable

I talked about apologies earlier. Forgiveness is the other side of the coin. My title is provocative: you’re all thinking of things are unforgivable.

Remember when Snape kills Dumbledore? He uses an unforgivable curse. And it is an unforgivable curse. But is what he did unforgivable?

I would like to make a distinction between something being unforgivable and something one cannot forgive.

There are things people have done to me that I cannot forgive. I have broken (a handful) of friendships because of such situations. But these are not unforgivable actions per se. They are actions that I am unable to forgive.

Apologies are important. Because an important ingredient enabling forgiveness is the recognition by the perpetrator of the harm done. Apologies may be hollow, or insufficient. But they are necessary.

I am not saying we have to forgive everything. And we are not all Hector Black. But our world needs more compassion and forgiveness, and less outrage. When I say we need compassion and forgiveness, I’m not saying we should leave anger aside. Anger is there. But we can choose how to use it.

What else?

There is more to say, and I will certainly say more. My feeling right now is largely of sadness. Sad for my friend and his family, sad for the hurt he caused, sad for all the broken people we are, sad for the broken system we are caught in, sad for the deafening outrage, drowning out the much more difficult conversations that need to be had.

If you’re going to comment: please leave your outrage at the door.Similar Posts:

[en] I've just finished my third week as an employee. Everything is going fine. I'm happy. Who would have thought that working nearly full-time a good hour of home could feel restful? I'm tired, of course, but my cognitive load has shrunk.

]]>http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2017/10/20/trois-semaines/feed/07450Why I Get My Flu Shot Each Year [en]http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2017/10/19/why-i-get-my-flu-shot-each-year/
http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2017/10/19/why-i-get-my-flu-shot-each-year/#respondThu, 19 Oct 2017 05:35:01 +0000http://ctts.spirolattic.net/?p=7447Continue reading "Why I Get My Flu Shot Each Year [en]"]]>

Years ago, when we ended up with a separate vaccine for H1N1, I wrote an article in French summarizing my personal research on the topic of flu vaccinations: I’d decided I would be getting the flu shot.

Aside from the fact that I’m still amazed when I realise otherwise rational people think vaccines are a Bad Thing (listen to the great Science Vs Vaccines podcast episode for some debunking of common fears), here are some of the arguments that made me come to the conclusion that I was going to get vaccinated against influenza.

First, it’s important to understand what the flu is. It’s not this thing people routinely catch and call the “flu”. What we usually call the flu is in fact one of the many flavours of the common cold. You feel crappy, you might even be off work for a week, you get a fever, your nose is all stuffy, you might even have trouble breathing if, like me, you get bronchitis. I’ve been out of order for three weeks due to bronchitis developed over the common cold. If you’re falling ill, stay in bed two days, and then you’re over it, it wasn’t the flu. It was the common cold.

Why is this important? Well, the flu and the cold are different families of viruses. Getting vaccinated against the flu will not prevent you from catching a cold or bronchitis. Also, there are high chances you are underestimating how nasty the flu actually is.

On average, you are likely to get the flu two or three times in your life. I don’t think I’ve personally ever caught it in my adult life – though I have been ill with various colds and bronchitis (very miserable ones too) dozens and dozens of times. At one point I would fall ill every month in winter. Really. I’d get over two weeks of sniffling and coughing misery, feel on the mend for two weeks, and then start all over again. And it wasn’t the flu.

The flu is a disease that kills every year (numbers are tricky to compute because the direct cause of death is often the opportunistic bacterial infection that takes hold over an organism weakened by the virus). It’s the virus that had my mechanic, a super-healthy-never-ill strapping 45-year-old, off work for two weeks and unable to work “normally” for a month and a half. And he’s self-employed: as all independants know, we work even when we’re sick, because no work = no money. So him being off work so long is a testimony to how incapacitated he was.

Now that we’re clear about what the flu is and isn’t: should one get the shot?

Vaccination is risk management. And the human brain is super crap at risk management. You can’t really use your gut for it, because your gut is designed to keep you from getting eaten by wild beasts or falling off cliffs: present and immediate dangers. So, we’re going to have to be rational about this. Here are some guiding questions:

is being off work for three weeks (average time to get over the flu) a risk you’re ready to take? the answer to this will vary a lot depending on your professional situation.

are you at risk for complications? ie, do you have asthma, a weak immune system, a heart condition, or like me, a tendency to catch any upper respiratory tract infection that is lying around? chances are your doc has told you if you are, but it might be worth checking. If you are at risk for complications, catching the flu may have consequences more dire for you than for the average person. It may not be a risk you should be willing to take.

are you in contact with people who cannot get vaccinated, or who are at risk of complications? if you are, then you might want to reduce the risk of passing on the flu to them – by reducing the risk of catching it yourself.

The flu vaccine usually offers coverage around 70-90%. Less than some other vaccines, but still much more than zero.

In my case, once I thought about it, it’s a no-brainer: even though I’m not medically “at risk” enough to be provided with the shot free of cost here in Switzerland my doc has been pretty clear that in the event of me catching the flu, things were not going to be pretty. Plus, as somebody who is self-employed and already falls ill regularly, I’d rather not run the risk of being off work more than necessary. Not to mention the social responsability of contributing to herd immunity and doing my part to prevent the epidemic from spreading through me.

If you decide it makes sense to get vaccinated against the flu, then it also makes sense to get vaccinated each year. Unless your circumstances change dramatically, if catching the flu is not an acceptable risk for you this year, why would it be so next year? Bear in mind your chances of catching the flu are a handful of times in a lifetime – so only by getting the flu shot every year for a significant number of years do you get to reap the benefits. You can’t know in advance which year the nasty virus will try to crawl into your lap.

Time for me to go get that shot!

[PS: Comments refuting vaccine safety or efficiency will be deleted without pity. It’s not something I’m interesting in debating: the scientific consensus is quite clear.]Similar Posts: